Having to pay for hospital car parking is morally wrong, according to a Bracknell and Wokingham College student.

Teenager Matthew Salter is one of our young columnists as part of our Students Speak series in partnership with the college.

Here he explains why hospital patients or visitors should not have to pay for parking when they attend.

Currently in England if you are going to visit a friend or loved one in hospital or you need to go yourself for treatment, then you have to pay for the privilege of using an NHS hospital car park.

It has been proven by the Department of Health that several hospitals in the country have made over one million pounds from their car parks alone.

Hospitals will say that the income from their car parks will pay for improvements such as external lighting, walkways, cycle racks, security and improved car park and travel facilities and I do not doubt that this is true.

They have to find a way to fund themselves.

I find this current means of raising money morally wrong.

Some hospitals are charging £4 an hour for car park use. This is blatantly exploiting the sick and injured who have to visit hospitals.

Being a former cancer patient myself I would visit hospitals regularly for operations, tests/scans/x-rays and also treatment, according to the Macmillan Cancer Support charity on average a cancer patient will make at least 60 trips to hospitals from diagnosis to treatment.

Being in my early teens I did not have to pay for all of the car parking charges, I couldn’t even drive then, but my parents did.

Sometimes I was in hospital for several weeks and my parents and other friends and family would have to pay inflated amounts for the parking just to visit me.

It got me thinking about others having to pay for their car parking while struggling to have enough money to support themselves or their family.

It just seems wrong, particularly in these financially difficult times.

We in Britain pride ourselves that we have a free health service, and, unlike other countries such as America, do not make money out of the sick and injured.

We don’t tax the sick. But it seems to me that by paying for the use of hospital car parks the NHS is definitely taxing the sick and the most vulnerable.

I hope that in the not too distant future our government can sort this problem out.

I know it will affect hospitals’ income and I don’t have a ready-made solution but I just know what is currently being done is wrong.